Daily dharma dose(s)…

Some food for the soul, perhaps? Meant to post these but kept forgetting. All from Tricycle.

Real Freedom

Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such cases we may as well be animals or robots. If there is no space between an insulting stimulus and its immediate conditioned response—anger—then we are in fact under the control of others. Mindfulness opens up such a space, and when wisdom is there to fill it one is capable of responding with forbearance. It’s not that anger is repressed; anger never arises in the first place.

-Andrew Olendzki, “Calm in the Face of Anger,” Tricycle, Fall 2006

The Possibility of Kindness

We must realize, if tomorrow is going to look any better than today, that the currency for compassion isn’t what someone else does, right or wrong—it is the very fact that that person exists. Commitment to the possibility of kindness cannot be discarded as foolish or irrelevant, even in troubling times when we often can’t find easy answers. If we abandon the force of kindness as we confront cruelty, we won’t learn anything to take into tomorrow—not from history, not from one another, not from life.

– Sharon Salzberg, The Force of Kindness

And lastly…

Starting Over with Ourselves

We need to be able to forgive ourselves when we stumble or forget, and based on that forgiveness, be able to reconnect to our basic intention. One of the primary tools we have in spiritual life is the understanding that everything is changing all of the time, that nothing is fixed, and nothing is permanent. Because of that truth, when we make a mistake we realize that we can begin again.